He’s hit the post, clipped the bar

And now he’s the better man by far

For the humbling experience of being

A nearly published poet, work still unseen

 

A ghost, a shadow nursing the dream

The invisible man of the literary scene

Not seeing his words preserved for an age

Black on white on at least one page

 

It was fun while it lasted, the fleeting thought

That somebody somewhere might even have bought

One copy of The Poetry’s Dead

Anthology and read

 

That one he wrote about his neighbour’s nocturnal proclivities

For drinking al fresco, and hot tub activities

 

But it wasn’t to be.

 

His poem got cut from the final collection

There was no time to make a last-minute correction

He had to cancel the tour and a truckload of merch

He’s left his road manager in the lurch

A whole year of Premier Inn breakfasts can wait

It’s all on hold, he’s wiped the slate

He won’t be at Hay on Wye with his solitary page

For book signings with Simon Armitage

He’s no longer in line for that all-paid-for apartment 

At Harvard’s Creative Writing department

The Arts Council grant has been lost in the post

He’s surplus to requirements as guest host

Of Poetry Extra, Poetry Please

The Verb and other podcasts like these

He’s back to spend time in the blaze of obscurity

Living on daydreams and social security

 

He never quite got there

So near, yet so far

The decision was made

There was no VAR

No comeback, no reprint, just an apology

And a blank page at the back of a printed anthology.

 

As a young poetry lover with Irish family, naturally I was drawn to W B Yeats. I even had a poster of him (along with Joyce, and Marilyn Monroe) in my room at university, which I bought in a little bookshop by the River Liffey. So when I learned a few weeks ago that a poem of mine had been chosen for The Poetry's Dead podcast anthology - and would be sold in the Winding Stair independent bookshop, by the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin, I was quite excited. It would have been my first published poem. One week later I received an emailed apology: 

"I have some shameful and awful news to be frank. Because you were one of the first poets we had on the list of people we wanted work from, as the chase to get things sorted unravelled, we have mistakenly and absolutely accidentally left your poem out of the collection.

I woke up in a cold sweat today knowing something was missing from the book, and it was your bloody brilliant poem."

So I wrote this. 

Ah well, maybe next year. 

(Ryan and Leon, the two lovely young poets who run The Poetry's Dead, sent me an absolutely beautiful book; "Ireland's Heart" which is a collection of Yeats poems, each accompanied by a piece of (mainly Irish) art. I highly recommend their podcast - catch it if you can)